Posted on 07/01/2017 8:56:22 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Even though Costco is in a suburb of Seattle, and they raised their minimum wages $13 an hour for the first raises for them in 9 years, they are just a small company with little turnover.
The population of Seattle is right at 4 million with a 3.5% unemplyment rate. That doesn’t sound too bad but this area is filled with minimum wage jobs like fast food, shopping mall stockers, not the type of jobs a family subsists on. This was why this state pandered to the voters by raising the minimum wage. And it’s taking it’s toll by unemploying in a lot of small businesses with less than 10 employees.
The major employer in the area was Boeing. And when the state could no longer promise them special tax rates and extended pay periods, they bailed out of here by better than half of their of the workforce moving baack east. An example was not making them pay the state sales taxes for their aircraft. Imagine that amount over time of the mid 60’s till a couple of years ago. So they moved their headquarters to Chicago and bailed most of the business out of Washington.
The other major is Microsoft. But a vast majority of their work is done by jobber contract with layoffs in between. And they use the same companies, not really new people.
rwood
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